Pair peering at pears get me thinking

I often wonder how other families work – what they talk about, if they brush their teeth side-by-side in the mirror every morning, how they decide on big-ticket items. It's the little things families do in public that make me stare and stand too close, trying to eavesdrop on their conversations.

Like at Trader Joe's: A family was standing in front of the boxed fruit. The man was holding a box of Asian pears, and the woman was diligently trying to pry the perfectly square plastic box open (despite the galvanized tape) to touch them, I guess. Calmly, the man used his freakishly long index finger to lift the side so she could … yes, yes ... she wanted to touch them. And when she did, she immediately shook her head and waved them away.

He picked up another box, and they began another hushed and passionate conversation about … Asian pears. I tried to hear what they were saying, pretending that I cared deeply about the clementines sitting next to the pears. But they were enormously secretive and careful not to let the rest of us know what was so flippin' interesting about Asian pears.

Naturally, this made me think about my family. I can't even imagine having a conversation that long about pears. I remember once having a pretty lengthy conversation about how much we loved cheese, but it was more because we were hungry. We started asking each other outrageous questions like, “If you could make a deal that you never could eat cheese again, but you would then be able to fly, would you?” Seriously, who would make that deal? Nobody – but that's the kind of thing we talk about in our family.

So you can understand my fascination with this couple at Trader Joe's. Or maybe you can't. I just couldn't shake it. Asian pears just seem like a very particular and much more sophisticated thing to talk about than cheese. I mean, we would have flown by those pears at breakneck speed and thrown them into our cart. No discussion.

It made me wonder if we're missing out on something. Don't things like this make you speculate about how different other people's lives are? Are they happier? Are their kids more intelligent? Can they really afford to buy their children's clothes at J.Crew? I see families on weekend mornings who have obviously been out with their baby joggers, sipping their lattes, the Times in hand, and I think, “Huh, am I the only mom who waves her kids away on Saturday mornings, muttering from under my pillows about cartoons and directing them to the special ‘Saturday cereal?'”

But we're also a family who likes to roll all the windows down in the car on a cool evening, blast '80s music and drive around town singing at the top of our lungs. We get excited about good cheese, appreciate a well-played prank and like to watch “MasterChef Junior” while eating Kraft mac n' cheese, smiling at each other as we take in the irony of it.

I guess it all comes down to perspective – appreciating who we are and what we value. Being able to say to myself with confidence, “I'm a mom who sleeps in and lets SpongeBob entertain my kids on Saturdays.” And, I suppose, accepting we are the type of family who talks about multiple cheese scenarios and not much about Asian pears, and being OK with that. And I most certainly am.

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